Now with 30% less "check mbta.com"!

[barumonkey.livejournal.com]

Google Maps now includes "By public transportation" as an option when getting directions within the greater Boston area!

http://tinyurl.com/mtvthl

Huzzah!

Comments

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

Sweet! It wasn't there yesterday. Thanks for the update.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

Actually, it WAS there yesterday, but I don't think it was there the day before B-)

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

You're right. It was Tuesday when I wanted to use it.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

In my experience, features like this get rolled out very very quietly, testing the feature itself and its attendant interface design changes, usually on only a few actual appservers, to garner feedback.

I'd seen the "by public transportation" option in the wild as early as two weeks ago.

[ionicaq.livejournal.com]

You could click on it, and it would give you a list of cities you could use it for, and Boston wasn't on there the last time I checked.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hadn't tried actually clicking on it. Good to know.

[ckd]

When I found out about it yesterday, Boston wasn't on the clickable list, but if you asked for directions (say from Harvard Square to Logan) you had the option of getting transit directions.

[ionicaq.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha. The last time I tried it (no idea when it was) it was just like "these are the cities that have this feature" or something to that effect, it's been a while.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

Soooo-weet!

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Nice! I've wished for that so many times!

[canedeparie.livejournal.com]

it doesn't really work.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

how so?

[canedeparie.livejournal.com]

well at least it hasn't for me. whenever i have tried to use it it says they can't find the area or the feature doesn't cover the area specified or something.

the last time i tried to use it was two days ago....

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Well, guess what?

It's working NOW, which was kind of the whole point of the post.

Did you actually try clicking on the link that was included with the original post?

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[canedeparie.livejournal.com]

ooo.. yeah i just tried it again. thanks.

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[canedeparie.livejournal.com]

chill out.

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Why should I chill out when you are giving incorrect info?

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[canedeparie.livejournal.com]

im not. i guess i SHOULD have said "i noticed this a while ago.. i didn't know it was working. thanks!" sorry. i forgot the internet is such serious business. i will try harder next time. :)

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[teele-sq.livejournal.com]

what do you mean?

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

(http://xkcd.com/386/)

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

ah, yes, you 386'd me.

How special.

Re: the last time i tried to use it was two days ago.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

WORD

[barumonkey.livejournal.com]

Try now...

[ron_newman]

Can you give an example of a trip where it doesn't give the correct directions? I'd like to play around with it a bit

[canedeparie.livejournal.com]

seems to work for everything all the time now. it's pretty great. :)

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

ooh, excellent. and hopefully easier than trying to map a trip-by-bus on mbta.com....

[m00n.livejournal.com]

You can map bus trips on MBTA.com?

[ron_newman]

what trouble have you had with it? I'm curious to compare the two sites with your trip.

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem I've had with the T's trip planner is misidentifying the locations I type in. If I type "Kendall Square", I mean the T station, not the crossroads in Kansas with that name.

[blackdove24.livejournal.com]

They do have a link that says "Find landmarks/stations" to help prevent that problem. A little window comes up and you can scroll through the T stations, and assign both the beginning and destination of your trip without leaving the window.
(Yeah, I used to have that problem all the time too and only started using the "Find stations/landmarks" feature a few weeks ago...)

[tfarrell.livejournal.com]

I've been using the T's web site for directions for rather a while now. It has... quirks. Unfortunately, the quirks change.

What used to work consistently was to add the word "station" to the name of the station, in the address field. So, for Kendall, you'd enter "Kendall Square Station". Ok, reasonable. But, South Station had to be entered as "South Station Station". Not so reasonable, but I could remember it.

However, for no discernible reason lately this doesn't seem to work any more, and I've had to resort to using addresses that I can find that are very near the station... so for example, when I want the Davis station, I enter "1 Davis Square, Somerville", and that's good enough.

The T also has frequent weird glitches. Sometimes it will tell me, on, say, saturday afternoon at 2pm, that there are no routes that will get me from my home to Davis square. (Funny, what about all those buses on Highland?) Another one that it seems to want me to try from time to time is, when I want to go downtown, rather than getting me on a bus to some subway station in a sane manner, it tells me to get on the 88, ride through Davis all the way to the end of the route, sit there and wait 20 minutes for the bus to start back, get off in Davis when the bus is on its way back in the other direction, and take the red line downtown. Huh?

I sincerely hope Google's mastery of our transportation system is better than the T's.

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

sort of? i mean, they do have maps of the bus routes.... but i meant using said maps (and, uh, googlemaps) trying to figure out the best way to get from point a to point b on the bus, which was a pain in the ass the couple times i had to do it. if there's an easier way on mbta.com i never figured it out.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Their maps were *very* limited. For example, even though they thought to put every single bus stop for the route onto the map, they didn't give the stops names corresponding to what was written on the schedule, so if you were unfamiliar with the area, it was really pretty difficult to tell what time the bus was supposed to arrive at some point midway along the route. Not that they really keep to the schedules anyway, but still!

[ron_newman]

This is a brand-new initiative that officially rolls out today, a joint effort of Google and the MBTA.

http://mbta.com/about_the_mbta/news_events/?id=17905&month=&year=

[blackdove24.livejournal.com]

Wooot. I had heard this was rolling out soon, thanks for the update!

Works from mobile devices too!

[iceslicer.livejournal.com]

Don't for get to try it out on your mobile device with Google Maps. I can now use my BlackBerry Storm to give me the fastest route to anywhere in the Boston area without a car! I've been waiting for this for a couple years, since I found out about Google Transit. Finally the T does something right! Whoo!

Re: Works from mobile devices too!

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is awesome, because the MBTA.com page SUCKED on mobile devices.

[versonic.livejournal.com]

FINALLY.